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Home , Acculturation

for Resistance

HIRANO Kenichiro*

Key words: antagonistic acculturation, modernization of the non-Western society, Herodianism and Zealotism, non-Western nationalism, Chinese Westernizers / Japanese Europeanizers / Korean reformers, national essence ideology

1. Antagonistic Acculturation Antagonistic Acculturation In this article, acculturation stands for changes in that take place in consequence of its contact with another culture. Here, we are specifically concerned with resistance to acculturation. Generally speaking, we can divide resistance to acculturation into four types (See Figure 1). They are: type I— combination of resistance concerning cultural elements and resistance against acceptance; type II—combination of resistance concerning cultural elements and resistance against giving; type III—resistance concerning a group in contact and resistance against accep- tance; and type IV—combination of resistance concerning a group in contact and resistance against giving. Most cases of resistance to acculturation are of

Figure 1 Four types of resistance to acculturation resistance against acceptance resistance against giving resistance concerning type I type II cultural elements resistance concerning type III type IV a group in contact

* This is a full English translation by the author himself, with a minimum of adaptations, of Chapter 7 of Hirano Kenichiro, Kokusai Bunka-ron (International Cultural Relations), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2000. The book’s Korean translation by Kim Dong-Myong and Jang In-Sung has been published from Seoul and the Chinese translation by Zhang Qi-xiong, Zhou Zhao-liang, Huang Dong-lan and Feng Qing is going to be published soon. 38 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 type I, namely, resistance to accepting a particular cultural element because of its characteristics. A culture resists acculturation, first, by refusing or neglecting cultural elements that are being transmitted and presented (resis- tance at the first stage) and, second, by resisting or reinterpreting cultural elements that have been selected and accepted into the receiving culture (resistance at the second stage). Both first stage and second stage resistance are types of cultural resistance by the receiving culture. Cultural resistance is often accompanied by movements of social and political resistance by the members of the receiving society. Here, let us consider type III resistance, leaving aside for a moment resis- tance against giving (i.e., resistance types II and IV). This type of resistance is resistance to accepting cultural elements from a group in contact because that group is specific. Because we detest the group in contact, we do not want to accept its particular cultural elements, such as elements that are character- istic of that group and elements of which the group is proud. Rather, it is more natural for us to refuse that group’s culture in toto in order to resist the group in contact. In this case, if we refuse the group itself, we can achieve the goal. In real terms, we shall close off our own group, or distance ourselves from the group in contact in order to avoid contact with the group in question. Typical is national seclusion, as in the case of Tokugawa Japan. If the group in contact is so powerful, however, that it is impossible for us to keep refusing it or to maintain the seclusion of our country, what can be done? If the group that forces upon us contact with it is very powerful, we must face it as an enemy. If we insist upon using our own culture for self- defense against the other group, we shall be militarily, politically and/or economically controlled by the group with its physically powerful culture; our group may even eventually cease to exist. Seeing that that is likely, our group will do a volte-face, daring to accept the other’s culture—even a great deal of it—in an attempt to defend itself. We use the enemy’s weapons, so to speak, to defend ourselves. By doing so, we may prevent being defeated, even if we are not able to defeat them. This type of acculturation, in which the other group’s culture is accepted in order to resist that group, is called “antagonistic acculturation”1. In other words, while antagonistic acculturation is resistance of type III in that it is resistance against the group in contact, it is the reversal of resistance type I in that the group’s culture is not refused but accepted, if only tentatively. Thus, when a group barely succeeds in maintaining its existence through antago- nistic acculturation, its culture is altered a great deal, even coming to

1 George Devereux and Edwin M. Loeb, “Antagonistic Acculturation,” American Sociological Review, Vol.III (1943–44), pp. 133–147. Acculturation for Resistance 39 resemble the other’s culture that was originally detested. “Modernization” pursued by non-Western societies faced with the culture of the modern West can be regarded as antagonistic acculturation. In modern international rela- tions, there have been cases in which non-Western societies yielded to in order to defend their political and economic independence. As is often said, however, the resulting changes were “modernization”, not “”. Antagonistic acculturation does not reproduce in the receiver the culture of the provider. This is so much the case that antagonistic acculturation is a type of acculturation. Stimulus Diffusion Even if conditions make it impossible to seclude the country, however, antagonistic acculturation is not always the only method for resisting the group making contact. One possible way to defend ourselves is to limit contact with the opposing group partly or with regard to particular aspects. When total seclusion is impossible, it is still possible to attempt “defensive isolation”, or “purposive isolation”, by partially limiting social contact (example: foreign settlements), or by prohibiting acceptance of certain cultural elements (examples: embargos, boycotts, and tariff walls). In so-called “silent exchanges” or “silent trade”, two groups alternately leave goods for exchange, for example, under a tree on a border to carry out barter without direct contact. In terms of acculturation, it can be said that this prim- itive practice was the prototype of a sort of limited contact and acceptance of cultural elements. Another way to cut off the opposing group is to create a cultural element of our own that differs from the other culture in means and in form and yet makes it possible to achieve the same goal as the opposing group. It aims at countering the opposing group without accepting their cultural elements. This method may resemble attempts at inventing or discovering original cultural elements, but the context is different, as the receiving side is keenly aware of the other’s presence and cultural elements. We may call this type of cultural rivalry “negative acculturation”. One example is to try using shamanistic prayers to obtain cures, while recognizing the curing effects of Western medi- cine. One of the methods of negative acculturation, like this example, is to retrogress to the pre-contact culture, resulting in nativistic . Another is a method called “differentiation of different aspects” by which the resisting group emphasizes and exaggerates the means and forms that are different from those of the opposing group. Only because it is in contact with the other, it exaggerates and displays its differences from the other, but often- times the differences exist only on a surface level. A more extreme method is to intentionally adopt ways that are diametrically opposed to those of the other group, even to the degree of reversing the values of right and wrong for the sole intention of negating the other. 40 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010

These methods all have the objective of resisting opposing groups, yet some are structured in opposition to antagonistic acculturation. To repeat, the essence of antagonistic acculturation is to combine resistance to the opposing group and acceptance of its cultural elements. In contrast to this, still another method is to combine minimal resistance against the opposing group with incomplete acceptance of its cultural elements. This method of cultural change is called “stimulus diffusion” or “diffusion of ideas”. Minimal contact with the group in question ensures that only vague information or ideas regarding its particular cultural elements are transmitted. Stimulated by these ideas, the group in question discovers or invents cultural elements of its own, independently of the other. Stimulus diffusion is contrastive to antagonistic acculturation, in that with minimal resistance against the opposing group, there is little conscious desire for the group’s existence or little insistence upon cultural uniqueness. Yet new cultural elements produced through stimuli are different from those stimulating elements. In short, contact with the opposing group is characteristically the condition necessary for antagonistic acculturation. It might have been inappropriate to refer at this point to stimulus diffusion that lacks the conditions of contact with the opposing group or of resistance against it. However, in actuality, many desperate attempts have been made to acquire the other group’s cultural elements—simultaneously maintaining contact while keeping the opposing group away. We should pay attention to the fact that many of the above-mentioned methods of cultural resistance that are different from antagonistic acculturation in one way or another have similar structures to stimulus diffusion. Herodianism and Zealotism (or the opening and seclusion of a country) The historian Arnold J. Toynbee has said that in the encounter of , response on the side that encounters a more active, creative, or even encroaching can have two patterns: drastic resistance or a resis- tance that assumes the character of antagonistic acculturation. He maintains that such responses have repeatedly taken place in history. He takes as repre- sentative examples the responses of Hebraism to contact with Hellenism around the beginning of the Christian era. He names drastic resistance of Hebraism against Hellenism “Zealotism”, and the attitude of resistance tending toward antagonistic acculturation, “Herodianism”. Needless to say, Toynbee deals with encounters between great civilizations, but these two patterns of responses can be applied to contacts between . Herodianism is the pattern of response by the Herodian party among the in the first century BC. The Herodians acquired the weapons ofthe intruding foreign civilization, and used the borrowed weapons to defend themselves against their original inventor-owners so as not to allow their Acculturation for Resistance 41 civilization to look inferior to the opposing civilization. In contrast to the fanaticism characteristic of Zealotism, it can be said that Herodianism is cool and calculating. In addition to the response taken by King Herod in the first century BC, Toynbee lists as examples of Herodianism the responses and policies taken by Russia’s Peter the Great; the leaders of Japan’s Meiji Restoration; Selim III; Mahmud II; Mehmed Ali; all of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire; and Kemal Ataturk 2. In contrast, Zealotism completely and fanatically excludes any intruding alien civilization. Zealots, those fanatic believers of Judaism who were convinced that their God would save them from downfall if they kept faith, tried to defend their civilization to the end by adhering to their traditional way of living and by rigidly abiding by laws that passed down from their ancestors. The examples of Zealots that Toynbee lists in addition to the Zealots of first-to-second century Palestine include the Wahhabi, Sanusi, and Mahdist Muslims in Arabia and North Africa during the 18th and 19th centu- ries; the Japanese during the period of self-isolation; the Chinese from the 17th century to the early 20th century, with the Boxers being most representa- tive; and those American Indians who opposed white settlers in 19th century America3. Toynbee points out that Herodianism is in essence equal to Zealotism. He asserts that they are based on the same principles, only differing from each other in policies. Herodians too, hated alien civilizations that they were forced to face, and therefore attempted to adopt tools and means only to the minimum extent that they were necessary for self-defense. As a result, Herodians could have avoided the fate of annihilation or ruin that Zealots invited unto themselves. But the Herodians in turn invited the fate of adopting the aggressor’s alien civilization, causing themselves peculiar pain and tragedy4. For non-Western societies that suffered invasions of modern Western powers or the threat thereof, the experiences had the nature of forced contact with powerful alien cultures. To use Toynbee’s terminology, responses to such challenges could be categorized as either Herodianism or Zealotism. It follows that those responses that have been called “modernization” in partic- ular were antagonistic acculturation, or what Toynbee calls Herodian

2 A. J. Toynbee, Matsumoto Shigeharu, tr. and ed., Rekishi no Kyōkun (Lessons from History), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1957, p. 89 [This is a of Toynbee’s lectures given in Japan in 1956. See also Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, volume 8, Galaxy Book edition, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp. 592–593, 602–603]. 3 Ibid., pp. 87–89 [See also A Study of History , vol. 8, pp. 596, 602–603]. 4 Ibid., p. 90. 42 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 responses. In the years at the cusp of the modern age, powerful alien cultures compelled non-Western societies to “open their countries”; the alien powers did not simply compel the end of self-isolation but the replacement of cultures. If the opening of a country led to a change of culture, then there was no other choice for self-defense than antagonistic acculturation. To persist in “excluding foreigners” was not simply to retain isolation but to defend one’s own culture by refusing to accept another culture. It seems that the exclusion of foreigners was a willful decision for annihilation as Zealots5. Resistance by Giving Sides When we consider resistance in acculturation and acculturation as resistance, we are apt to concentrate our perspective on the receivers. But resistance can be observed from the side of the givers as well, as we have indicated above in our two types of resistance against giving (types II and IV). Broadly speaking, resistance against giving is less prob- lematic than resistance against acceptance, for giving another group a cultural element does not extinguish that element from the giver’s culture, nor cause any structural change to it. Yet when the other group is an enemy and, what is more, is attempting antagonistic acculturation toward the giver’s culture, the response by the giving side becomes complex. In some cases, the giving side prohibits giving certain cultural elements, just as the receiving side restricts acceptance of certain cultural elements (Examples: military secrets, trade restrictions, economic blockades, and prohibition on language ). On the other hand, attempts are often made to compel other groups to receive the giver’s cultural elements, so as to subjugate them culturally or to make them resemble the giving society. In some cases, the giving side adds changes to its own cultural elements so as to let the receiving group accept them. In those cases, acculturation causes changes to the giver’s culture as well, sometimes initiating great resis- tance on the giving side to those changes. For example, when the Catholic church tried to propagate Christianity in Qing China, discord broke out among Catholics. The Jesuits had taken measures to facilitate propagation; in the encounter between the two universal cultural doctrines of Confucianism and Christianity, they did not reject Confucianism completely, but stressed the

5 cf. Fujita Yūji, “Sonnō-Jōi Undō ni tsuite no Kōsatsu”, jō and ge (“A study of the sonnō jōi movement”, part 1 and part 2), Kokusai-kankei-ron Kenkyūkai (Association of International Relations Studies, University of Tokyo), ed., Kokusai-kankei-ron Kenkyū (Studies on International Relations), No. 6 and No. 7 (June 1987, March 1989), and Fujita Yūji, “Kinsei Nihon ni okeru jiminzoku chūshin-teki shikō: ‘Senmin’ ishiki toshite no Nihon chūshin shugi” (“Conception of the self-nation as the center in pre-modern Japan: The ‘chosen people’ consciousness in Japan-as-the-center thinking”), Shisō (Thought), No. 832 (October 1993). Acculturation for Resistance 43 similarities between the two teachings. They succeeded to a certain extent in their mission by syncretizing Catholic dogma with Confucian teaching. This caused a power struggle among the Catholic orders. The Jesuits, sponsored by Portugal, were based in Macao and succeeded in moving up from Canton to Peking. The other orders, such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, backed by Spain and based in Manila, also tried to propagate Catholicism in Asia. Being jealous of the Jesuits, they started reproaching the order for compromising Catholic doctrines. With reproaches against the Jesuits pouring into the Vatican, a theological trial was opened at Sorbonne where a judg- ment was passed that the Jesuits had distorted Catholic doctrine, thus flat- tering the Chinese civilization and Confucianism. The Catholic fundamental- ists were victorious. The pope sent a letter to the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing dynasty, saying that the Jesuits were incorrect in their teachings and that the Franciscans and the Dominicans were to be permitted to continue their mission. The Yongzheng Emperor disliked being embroiled in the conflict on the giving side, which was later called the “rites controversy”, and prohibited Catholic missions from operating in China once and for all.

2. Acculturation and Nationalism Culture and the Modern State The following three elements are commonly considered necessary for the formation of a modern nation-state: (1) the formation of national consciousness, (2) the establishment of a national economy, and (3) the formation of a nation-wide structure of government and administration. Karl W. Deutsch, who brilliantly explained the formation of a modern nation-state in terms of social communication, rendered this common understanding more precise. He listed the following six partial integrations as conditions for the political integration of the nation-state: (1) the geographical integration of a people through the development of a communication system, (2) linguistic integration, (3) the integration among social elites, (4) the inte- gration of a community moving up from the ethnic level to the national level by the enlargement of “we-feeling”, (5) the establishment of the concept of a “nation” sharing meanings and the habit of interlocking communication, and (6) the achievement of political integration in the narrow sense by the inte- gration of administrative sections6. We may say that five of these six partial integrations are of a cultural nature. That is, when all the cultural conditions

6 Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Its Alternatives, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, pp. 4–20. To be thoroughly informed of Deutsch’s study of the process of nation-state building with the theory of social communication, read Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1953, 1966. 44 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 are met, the nation-wide structure of government and administration finally comes into being, like a ripe persimmon falling down to the ground. Benedict Anderson defines a nation, the pre-stage of the nation-state, as “an imagined community” and considers its “cultural origins” to be of primary importance7. In other words, the most crucial of the three commonly listed elements is the first element of the formation of national consciousness. To explain this point as Deutsch would do, the development of modern science, technology, and industry mobilizes people socially, a network of social communication is formed among the people, and then the formation of national consciousness is achieved. To build a network of social communication, it is necessary to build the hardware of traffic and communication networks. But that is not enough. We must have a software mechanism that, flowing over the hardware network, enables communication of wills among people, namely, a common language and the commonness of a culture that is centered around the commonness of the language. In short, the existence of a common culture is vital for the formation of a modern nation-state. In most cases, a common culture, or its foundation at least, which is indispensable to the formation of national consciousness, is the first condition for the formation of a modern nation-state. A common culture exists by virtue of a long history of cultural changes occurring repeatedly in the area8. But that is not sufficient; it is necessary to make the culture have even more commonality on that basis. For instance, if people who speak more than one dialect want to be one nation, they must create a common language beyond their dialects. In order to assign the same meaning to each word, it is neces- sary to make their values, judgment of right and wrong, preferences, aesthetic feelings and so forth more similar. When people behave as their compatriots anticipate and hope, their sense of solidarity becomes firmer. Likewise, it is necessary to create or discover the myth or belief that they have had a common basis on which they can become a nation. Such efforts to make a culture have more commonality are made inten- tionally and simultaneously with the operation for nation-state building. Just

7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London and New York: Verso, revised edition, 1991, chapter 2 [third edition, 2006]. 8 For an example, please see Hirano Kenichiro, “Chūsei Nihon no Bunka-teki, Seiji-teki Tōgō: Bunka Unpan-sha toshiteno Rengashi Sōgi o Megutte” (“The cultural and political integration of medieval Japan: Sogi, the linked verse poet, as a culture carrier”, Nihon Kokusai Seiji Gakkai (The Japan Association of International Relations), ed., Kokusai Seiji (International Relations), No. 59, “Hi-kokka-teki Kōitai to Kokusai Kankei” (“Non-state Actors in International Relations”), August 1978. Acculturation for Resistance 45 as the nation-state to which those efforts give birth is regarded as if it had been in existence for a long time, the efforts are regarded to be domestic and not seeking acculturation. But in most cases, they actually bring about cultural changes of the same nature as acculturation. For many people change their ways of living and thinking from their own familiar culture to those of a different one. Political leaders in the center intentionally promote cultural changes in order to increase the commonness of the culture, by way of school education policies, language policies, public opinion policies, and so forth. The social foundation that enables these efforts is facilitated through the modernization of the means of traffic and communication9. State-building and Acculturation Furthermore, international acculturation is practically indispensable for the building of a modern state. The worldwide development of science, technology, and industry created a modern age in which not only internal contacts and exchanges of people advanced greatly, but international contacts and exchanges became inevitable. No nation could avoid building its state, in disregard of other nations’ doing so. Once the government of a nation takes policies and measures effective for state building, the governments of other nations sooner or later must import and adopt them as well. They actively promote the importing, selecting, and accepting of cultural elements required for state building by sending students abroad and inviting to their country foreign engineers and advisers. In fact, as far as the modern age is concerned, acculturation efforts described in books and articles like this look as if they were all attempts by governments for state building. We may paraphrase the modern age as an age in which the state was the agent for almost all acculturation for its own sake. While participating in those attempts, people formed social forces that carried out resistance to acculturation. In most cases, however, the resistance brought about cultural characteristics of the nation by going through intense frictions and conflicts, thereby contributing to strengthening the imagined commonness of the nation and for building their unique state. For example, the Tomioka Filature of Meiji Japan was an attempt at acculturation undertaken at the initiative of the Meiji government. Had Japan’s filature technology remained backward and in a conventional stage in the midst of increasing international contact after the opening of the country, an increasing volume of cocoons would have been taken abroad as raw mate-

9 As pointed out by Ernest Gellner and many other students of nationalism, during the process of nation-state building, people move from the old sense of belonging, restrained by their status and local folk culture, to the new sense of belonging to a new nation that is based on a new culture created by compul- sory education and a national curriculum. See, for example, Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, p. 57. 46 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 rial. It was natural for the Meiji government to bring in new technology from abroad, so as to make use of Japanese raw materials and acquire the resources for state building. Seeking to import new technology from Western Europe at the expense of the indigenous technology, the attempt was typically antagonistic acculturation. In the field of production, employing foreign engi- neers ignited internal and partial resistance against the acculturation. The people in Tomioka, the area that had had the most advanced indigenous tech- nology, tried to resist the extraneous cultural elements through the nativistic actions of seeking help from goblins believed to be living in the mountains in order to protect their traditional culture. In short, we can see dual nationalism involved in the Tomioka Filature case. As history records, Tomioka carried out a perfect acculturation of accepting, while transforming, the new, extra- neous technology after having aroused a nativistic resistance against it, and finally producing a world-leading filature technology. Incidentally, a study by Furuta Yoshida Kazuko reveals that of the two regions of Japan in rivalry with advanced traditional filature technologies— Jōshū and Shinshū—the Jōshū region, including Tomioka, which was more advanced in hand-reeling technology, staged a more violent resistance against the extraneous machine-reeling technology. The Shinshū region, a little behind in contact with foreign technology, became receptive of the new tech- nology a little earlier, and produced a Japanese machine-reeling technology after repeatedly making improvements. The Jōshū region followed suit, with both regions eventually refining the technology. Thus, both the Jōshū and the Shinshū regions sustained the filature industry, Japan’s major export industry during the Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods, thereby contributing greatly to the original accumulation of capital indispensable for state building10. This is one of the many examples in which acculturation for the sake of modern nation-state building stimulated nationalism, which in turn facilitated more nation-state building. What is more, it is through acculturation that the very notions of nation-state building and nationalism were introduced to many countries. Hans Kohn, an authority on the study of nationalism, did compara- tive studies on Western nationalism and non-Western nationalisms and concluded that the latter had been brought about through acculturation with the former. Students who were sent from non-Western countries to the coun- tries of the West became carriers of specific cultural elements in their respec- tive fields. Many of them also brought back the knowledge of nations and

10 Furuta Yoshida Kazuko, “Meiji-shoki Seishi Gijutsu Dōnyū ni okeru Dochaku to Gairai” (“The indigenous and the extraneous in the transfer of filature tech- nology during the early Meiji period”), Kagakushi Kenkyū (Studies in the History of Science), no. 121 (Spring 1977), pp. 16–23. Acculturation for Resistance 47 nation-states and the ideas and devices of nationalism that they had seen and studied in their host societies. They then tried hard to encourage their native countries to adopt them. For example, Yan Fu, a Chinese student sent to England during the late Qing period, discovered that what was required to make China a country of wealth and power was such imaginary cultural elements as the ideas of the nation-state and nationalism, rather than any one concrete element. After his return home he went to the trouble of conveying such ideas to his fellow countrymen. Yan Fu discovered to his surprise the notion and reality that every individual member of a nation fully exercising his faculty could contribute to making an organic body out of a society-nation as a whole. For it had been unthinkable in China before then that a human being as an individual and a society-nation as a whole could have common interests. Yan Fu tried hard to convey that radical message to the Chinese people11. Hans Kohn went further to say that non-Western nationalisms formed their characteristics through acculturation with Western nationalism. According to Kohn, because these societies were ignited by an acculturation with Western nationalism that transformed into imperialism, the non-Western nationalisms assumed a reactive nature against Western nationalism. Characteristically, they exhibited a strong tendency to excessively praise cultural heritages that their imagined nations had produced in the past. He also pointed out that in non-Western societies in general, nationalism is emphasized more in the cultural arena than in the political one. He further pointed out that whereas Western nationalism, which is the product of the Age of Reason in the West, contains such elements as the idea of individual freedom and rational cosmopolitanism, non-Western nationalism exhibits such non-rational characteristics as worship for myths and an “idealized father- land” of the past, as well as Messianism, and even cargo cults, perhaps in reaction to alien liberalism and rationalism. He went on to say that the cargo cult was a typical expression of a non-Western inferiority complex toward the West12. One may doubt if Western nationalism is that much more rational. Yet we see a strong tendency to emphasize the spiritualism of the East vis-à-vis the materialism of the West in such thinkers as India’s Tagore, one of Kohn’s examples to the point. We also see in non-Western nationalism the conflicting tendencies of rejection and worship of Europe in competition with each other.

11 Benjamin I. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, esp. Chapter 3. (This author is the Japanese translator of this significant book by Professor Benjamin Schwartz.) 12 Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background, New York: Macmillan, 1944, pp. 43–47. 48 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010

To shift the angle somewhat, whereas Western nationalism was formed in the process of “differentiating the same”, that is, when regions were separated in the dismantling of the medieval Roman Empire, non-Western nationalisms came into being in the process of “assimilating the different” (or “taming the different”) while being confronted with Western nationalism and imperialism. In other words, non-Western nationalisms arose during the incorporation of local regions that had theretofore been separated. Therefore, as long as it was for “differentiating the same”, Western nationalism could be political and even rationalistic. On the other hand, non-Western nationalism could not avoid being more cultural, as long as it was for “assimilating the same”. In short, we can conclude that non-Western nationalisms were formed by accul- turation both internally and internationally. Politics of Acculturation Many non-Western nationalist movements juxta- posed tendencies toward nativistic movements resulting from acculturation with Western culture. When nativistic tendencies are compensated by the operation of consciously denying the opposing groups or differentiating the self from them, instead of going into simple retrogression, they grow into nationalism. When a non-Western developing nation enters into a process of acculturation with a Western culture, the resulting nationalism first starts as a resistance movement that seeks as its base, old, indigenous cultural elements in reaction to new elements. In other words, the nationalism of a non-Western developing nation starts in the form of resistance against external pressure. It produces charismatic leaders in the process, as the people start desiring Messianic leaders who can lead them in an exodus from their predicament. The leaders must be leaders of resistance as well as saviors. They discover in time that they cannot but take advantage of Western civilization as the means for saving their people. Thus starts antagonistic acculturation. In order to strike a balance, they praise native, traditional culture, but as acculturation proceeds, the division between the indigenous and the extraneous becomes wider. Attacking the contradiction, second generation leaders who are more nativistic, come to the stage, ending the period of the first generation leaders of nationalism. It is to be noted that many of the leaders of non-Western nationalism in the early period were students who had been sent overseas to the West, while many of the second generation leaders were of domestic origin. Lucian Pye, an American political scientist who studied political develop- ments in Asia after World War II, surveyed intellectuals who played signifi- cant roles in the nation-state building of non-Western countries. He noted that the following generational changes took place among them: during the colo- nial period, intellectuals played the role of petty colonial officials. They became Westernized intellectuals around the time of independence, and then Acculturation for Resistance 49 shifted to the type of intellectuals who stressed that they were anti-Western, despite being Westernized. And finally native intellectuals emerged. In order for the people of a country to learn the fundamentals of nation-state building, not only the leaders but also the general public are required to experience Western culture and acculturation to a certain extent. As a result, the general public also comes into contact with the outside world, becomes informed, and realizes that their leaders are not omnipotent. The acculturation process itself brings the reverse effect of producing psychological reactions that will suffo- cate and frustrate the efforts of state building. In these ways, acculturation with Western culture produces political effects on the nation-state building of non-Western countries, but as acculturation proceeds, the effects suddenly are reversed at a certain point in time. At this juncture, a generational shift of political leadership takes place from those leaders with more contact with the modern world to those with less, and in the atmosphere of a nativism that stresses national essence, even nationalistic leaders are purged for being “pro- Western”13.

3. Modernization of the Non-West Acculturation as Resistance by the Non-West The basso continuo throughout the history of modern international society has been the rivalry between the West and the non-West. For non-Western societies, the single, almost absolute issue was how to resist the West expanding and threatening them with overwhelming power. The resistance did not stop at being of a military, political and economic nature, but took on a wider, more funda- mental cultural nature. As I have already pointed out repeatedly, the method of cultural resistance was “modernization”, which exhibited the characteristics of antagonistic acculturation. In order to oppose the other side and its over- whelming power, this side adopted a succession of cultural elements while trying not to be swallowed up by them and not to resemble them. This was an attempt at brinkmanship, replete with fundamental contradictions. Each society within itself was deeply divided into two in regard to methods of resistance. To take examples from East Asia, surprisingly similar patterns of opposition emerged, as with the Westernizers (“yang-wu-pai”) vs. the conser- vatives in China; Europeanization (“ōka-shugi”) vs. national essence ideology (“kokusui-shugi”) in Japan; and enlightenment (“kaehwa”) vs. defense of orthodoxy in . To apply Toynbee’s typology, the former of each pair was Herodian and the latter Zealot, with the method of cultural resistance by the former being none other than antagonistic acculturation. We shall see

13 Lucian W. Pye, Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s Search for Identity, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. 50 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 below that there was significant contrast between the former and the latter. Yet, the two were the same in that they both struggled to keep the indepen- dence of their societies and maintain the core of their cultures. The oppositions of Westernizers vs. conservatives; Europeanization vs. preservation of national essence; and enlightenment vs. defense of orthodoxy are not the same as the opposition between the opening of a country and the exclusion of foreigners. Certainly, the attitudes of the conservatives, the national essence preservationists and the defenders of orthodoxy were succes- sors to the exclusion of foreigners, but the three oppositions were phenomena that occurred after the exclusion policies had been abandoned and the opening of the countries had already become an actuality14. Since it was already after the countries had been forcibly opened, acculturation that the Chinese Westernizers, the Japanese Europeanizers and the Korean reformists set out was also forced, and was not as simple as importing modern Western civilization because of its “importability.” On the whole, it was acculturation carried out in the circumstance of enforced contact. However, it was not the case that no voluntary selection of extraneous cultural elements was possible. Actually, desperate efforts at seemingly spontaneous selection were made more frequently than we would expect. First of all, the Chinese Westernizers typically attempted to accept Western cultural elements only in the area of military technology. This attempt can be said to have been a selection of areas in acculturation. Areas selected for acculturation shifted from military technology to technology in general; to the area of institutions; from institutions for production to economic institutions, to legal institutions, and to political and administrative institutions; and to the areas of education, science, and learning. The receivers could take some initiative in the order of selection and transition of areas. Further, in terms of more minute phases, the receivers decided to take particular elements in selected areas. A well-known case is the one in which the Meiji government of Japan, after searching in a number of countries for a

14 Fujita Yūji, “Nihon, Chōsen, Chūgoku no Kindai ni miru Zeroto-shugi no Ronri: Jōi-ron to Shukyū-ron ni kansuru Hikaku Kenkyū” (“The logic of Zealotism as seen in Japan, Korea and China in modern times: A comparative study on arguments for the exclusion of foreigners and the preservation of tradition”), Ph.D. thesis, Department of International Relations, University of Tokyo, 1999. This is the most recent and best study on this question. [Also, please see the same author’s magnum opus, Fujita Yūji, Ajia ni okeru Bunmei no Taikō: Jōi-ron to Shukyū-ron ni kansuru Nihon, Chōsen, Chūgoku no Hikaku Kenkyū (Civilizations in Opposition in Asia: A Comparative Study on Exclusionism and Conservatism in Japan, Korea and China), Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō, 2000.] Acculturation for Resistance 51 model constitution, selected the Prussian constitution and dispatched Ito Hirobumi to learn about it. Some people maintain that there was little room for selecting other than the state institution of constitutional monarchy and the enactment of a constitution, but selection was made on those points, too, and the people concerned with the task had clear ideas about selecting a specific constitutional model. In the case of China, the Qing government sent a team for investigating the constitutions of several countries. These selections, which seemed on the surface to be made by decision makers, were, essen- tially speaking, made based on the two principles of acculturation, namely, necessity of and compatibility with the receiving culture. The Chinese Westernizers, the Japanese Europeanizers, and the Korean reformers may be considered to have pushed forward antagonistic accultura- tion in the ruling circles of their respective countries. Indeed, the ruling regimes took the responsibility of carrying out acculturation, however explo- sive it might be. The responsibility for taking charge of opening the country, though forced, could not but be linked to the responsibility of taking charge of acculturation as well. Yet not all the groups within the ruling circles agreed upon acculturation for the reason that it was antagonistic. On the contrary, those who were strongly opposed to attempts at acculturation, like the Chinese conservatives, held invincible strongholds inside the ruling circles and stubbornly argued to preserve the national essence. Within the govern- ment, groups favoring acculturation and groups opposing it competed with each other, because strong feelings of pros and cons toward it welled up within each person. Person A might promote acculturation while person B might oppose it to the death. Each position could be seen as arbitrary, so much so that it would not be strange if either side changed positions. This kind of situation sharpened Zealot arguments against acculturation all the more, making them fundamentalist advocacies. Antagonistic acculturation by a non-Western society to Western culture is apt to be targeted by fundamentalist criticism not only from within but also from other non-Western societies. For every neighboring society is situated under forced acculturation, with the internal rivalry between groups favoring acculturation and groups opposing it being ever sharpened. It is also because time lags between societies are inevitable in the progress of acculturation. The time lags are caused in part by varied workings of the principle of cultural commonality upon different societies (See: Chapter 2 of the original Japanese edition). The progress of acculturation with Western culture by a preceding society especially stirs the feeling of crisis borne by groups opposed to acculturation in the society that starts it later. The groups in Korea that defended orthodoxy violently reproached the modernization policies of Japan’s Meiji government for being the wrong kind of acculturation. For 52 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 example, on the change of adopting Western clothes that was led by the government in the early Meiji period, Korean critics charged that throwing off traditional attire and adopting barbarian clothes was the act of beasts. As a matter of fact, the same criticism of Meiji Japan was made by China, and from the very person at that who was regarded as the magnate of the Westernizers, Li Hong-zhang. This tycoon of China’s Westernizers held historic meetings with Mori Arinori, then the Japanese minister to China, in 1876 and with Ito Hirobumi in 1884, on the question of Korea’s international status. During the diplomatic talks with Mori, Li Hong-zhang took up the issue of Japanese wearing Western clothing and repeatedly criticized the prac- tice as abandoning Asia’s traditional culture. While he praised the Meiji government’s modernization efforts, he was opposed to any acculturation in the institution of clothing. Though it might have been antagonistic, he argued, such acculturation was nothing but bad “Westernization” that might be selling out the core of the culture. Such criticism against antagonistic acculturation that could be considered to be modernization efforts was already brought up in international discussions. Europeanization The counter-argument to Li Hong-zhang’s criticism by Mori (later to become the Minister of Education) was full of confidence in Meiji Japan’s selection. He maintained that now, for working effectively at desks, the old, leisurely Japanese clothes were inadequate and Western clothing was more appropriate. He added that Japan, which had been right in adopting many cultural elements from China in the past, was now making another correct decision in adopting necessary elements from the civilization of the West. His argument was based on the logic that changes in the social and political milieu required changes in culture. Also, it can be said that his confi- dence was sustained by his regard of Western culture as “civilization”15. It was the attitude of Westernizers in the ruling circles to unhesitatingly promote a policy of Westernization, in the belief of the antagonistic nature of acculturation and also in civilization and enlightenment. Perhaps there was no other choice but to take the Herodian way cheerfully, throwing off any hesi- tation. Mori might not have expected Li Hong-zhang to focus on clothing. The cultural element of clothing held different meanings for China and Korea on the one hand and for Japan on the other. The changes in this cultural element,

15 The record of the conversations between Li Hong-zhang and Mori Arinori in 1876 is reproduced in Mori Arinori Zenshū (Mori Arinori Collections), Volume 1, Tokyo: Senbundō Shoten, 1972. [An English translation by this author of the second Li-Mori conversation is appended to Kenichiro Hirano, “Korea and Japan in the Regional and Global Contexts: Seoul Lecture Notes”, The Waseda Journal of Political Science and Economics, No. 371, 2008, pp. 101–134.] Acculturation for Resistance 53 which Mori considered to be small, were purposely promoted from the begin- ning of the Meiji era by the Meiji government. They were small changes necessary for the “important enterprise” of building the new Meiji state. The necessity originated from the functional linkage of cultural elements, as Mori himself stated. The “linking effects” of cultural elements that changed one after another took shape within a few years after the Meiji Restoration started16. It must have been extremely uncomfortable for officials of the Meiji government to suddenly wear frock coats and silk hats by government decree, and even more disconcerting to decide what clothes to change into once they returned home. Wearing Western clothing was certainly a symbol of civiliza- tion and enlightenment, but it was not an importation of civilization per se; it was a cultural change. There is little need to point out here that one of the manifestations of Meiji Japan’s civilization and enlightenment movement was a hall named Rokumeikan. It was a Western-style ballroom built in 1883 in the center of Tokyo, and was considered necessary for another “important enterprise” of the Meiji government, that is, the revision of unequal treaties. The Rokumeikan, where statesmen’s wives, clumsily clad in robes d’ecollete, gathered every evening to dance to Western music, is well known as an excess of ridiculous Europeanization. From the viewpoint of acculturation, this is another example of “effects of linking changes”. Yet, is the Rokumeikan a symbol of Japan’s selling out its “body and spirit” to Western civilization? Scenes like the Rokumeikan could be found nowhere in Europe. Mistranslation Yan Fu, who was sent to England as a student by the Westernizers of China, started introducing the leading political and economic thoughts of 18th and 19th century Europe shortly after his return home. He focused on translating European thought of the 18th to 19th centuries because he discovered that such thinking was behind the secret of modern Western power (See: Chapter 6, Section 1 of the original Japanese edition). His poignant selection was based on his discovery that China at that time should pursue acculturation with Western culture in the areas of ideas and visions, and not merely attempt to adopt technology and institutions. He himself engaged in the translations. Translation is often an act of reinterpretation of culture. But his works of translation contained many intentional mistransla- tions. For instance, his translation of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1903 under the Chinese title meaning “on the boundaries of collectives and

16 Kenichiro Hirano, “The Westernization of Clothes and the State in Meiji Japan”, in Kenichiro Hirano, ed., The State and Cultural Transformation: Perspectives from East Asia, Tokyo, New York and Paris: United Nations University Press, 1993, pp. 121–131. 54 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 individuals”, was a strange translation that contained many of his own commentaries. As is well-known, the characteristic of Mill’s theorem of liberty is that it elevated the concept of liberty from that of such outward action as appears in the discovery and pursuit of material interests, to that of exercising spiritual individualism. For Mill, individual liberty was not a means for liberating human faculty to promote the economic development of society, but an end in itself. Mill’s concept of liberty was that even people who are not favored with success and talent should be able to maintain their own modes of being. Mill’s advocacy of liberty of thought and speech served Yan Fu’s end as long as it was understood in the context of intellectual liberty that would advance truth, which in turn would develop the people’s knowledge and virtue that would bring wealth and power to the state. But Mill’s concept of individual liberty was distant from the state’s interests, and entailed unrestrained indi- viduality. In his translation, Yan Fu could accept Mill’s ideas only by replacing individuality with “people’s virtue” or the power of virtue of the people as a whole. Yan Fu could not escape from his thinking that the of the individual existed in its power to increase the wealth and power of the state; he distorted the concept of individual liberty, interpreting it to be not the end but the means17. Seeing their countries in sorrowful decline, intellectuals of the modern non-West whom Yan Fu represented held it in their utmost interest to look for the secret of wealth and power of Western society. Yan Fu discovered that the power of the modern West was not material alone; spiritual and intellectual powers occupied important positions. But after all it was predestined from the beginning that that sort of power of the individual would be valued as a means to ensure the power of the state. Yan Fu did highly value democracy, but only in the sense that it was effective as a means for achieving state power. Such mistranslation and distortion by Yan Fu can be justified as the accul- turation at that time of a non-Western society with Western society. In order to compete with the overwhelming power of the encroaching group (the state), it was inevitable, though tragic, to try likewise to strengthen the power of the group (the state). It was an attempt to exert the subjectivity of the receiving side to the fullest extent. In that sense, it can be said that Yan Fu’s “mistranslations” in his efforts at acculturation manifested the nature of the receiving society at the time. Moreover, as pointed out by Benjamin Schwartz and Louis Hartz, distortions in reinterpretations by the receivers reflect back on the character of the culture of the giving society—a character not even

17 Schwartz, op.cit., Chapter 6 and passim. Acculturation for Resistance 55 noticed by the givers themselves. It was because Western society and the international society it dominated in those years practiced the rule of power that Yan Fu and his contemporaries were captivated by the notion of power. It was precisely because the collective power of the group had existed as an implicit pre-condition in the West that it emphasized the liberty of the indi- vidual. The Meaning of National Essence Ideology Let us group together advoca- cies by such Zealots as China’s conservatives, Japan’s advocates of national essence, and Korea’s defenders of orthodoxy under the rubric of “national essence ideology”, and consider their meanings. By doing so, we shall conclude our investigation into the modernization of non-Western society from the viewpoint of acculturation. National essence ideology here is an advocacy for conserving the essence of the culture of a country; in our under- standing, it is in the next stage that the ideology becomes an object of contention by political movements. As is well-known, it was around the time when the Europeanization promoted by the Meiji government reached the apparently caricaturesque stage of “Rokumeikan” that the national essence ideology of Meiji Japan surfaced as a social phenomenon. Nevertheless, thoughts similar to national essence ideology already existed in the advocacy of exclusion of foreigners during the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Although such oppositions as Westernizers vs. conservatives; Europeanization vs. national essence pres- ervation; and reformers vs. defenders of orthodoxy were not the same as opposition between the opening of the country and the exclusion of foreigners, as stated above, defensive attitudes of national essence preserva- tion and orthodoxy succeeded the tendency to exclude foreigners. So, it may be plausible to think that the idea of national essence preservation existed before the opening of Asian countries. But it was by opening the countries that the national essence ideology took on its essential meaning. For only when the opening of the countries resulted in directly facing powerful foreign nations did the receiving societies realize that they were in contact with alien cultures. In that sense, it is better to consider the national essence ideology as, first of all, a cultural reaction by the receiving societies to the introduction of foreign culture. What preceded was the selection and acceptance of extra- neous cultural elements by the ruling regimes through forced contact resulting from “the opening of the country”. In the case of Japan, this was Europeanization. The ruling regime put policies of Europeanization into effect, and then the national essence ideology was advocated by the anti- establishment as passive reaction to the policies; therefore, this form of oppo- sition was inevitable. We must take note, however, that the opposition between Europeanization and national essence preservation did not 56 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.1 2010 completely coincide with the division of the ruling regime vs. the anti-estab- lishment. Finally, it was some time after the opening of the country, or the first contact with foreign culture, that the national essence ideology took the clear form of social movements, as in the case of Japan around the time of the Rokumeikan. In other words, it is when many foreign cultural elements are accepted in succession and begin replacing indigenous elements within the receiving culture that national essence ideology assumes its historical signifi- cance. In the final analysis, national essence ideology is the social expression of cultural resistance by the receiving culture. This is, from the viewpoint of acculturation, the most significant meaning of national essence ideology. As stated at the beginning of this section, given the conditions that non- Western societies were placed under in modern times, antagonistic accultura- tion was the only means for cultural resistance. National essence ideology, which is a reaction to that antagonistic acculturation, is as much cultural resistance as is antagonistic acculturation itself. In short, the national essence ideology is resistance to and denial of acculturation as resistance. Thus, in conclusion, modernization of non-Western society had a dual structure of resistance. It can also be said that the dual structure of resistance through cultural contact was transposed onto the character of nationalism of non- Western society. Why did national essence ideology, which is cultural conser- vatism by nature, become ultra-nationalism externally in the case of Japan? This is an interesting question that must wait for another investigation. In any case, to return to the question of the structure of acculturation in general, national essence ideology falls into the category of resistance that ordinarily takes place in the process of acculturation. Why does national essence ideology oppose acculturation? It is because it anticipates and intensely awakens to the “effects of linking changes” resulting from acculturation. National essence ideology is not simply from the beginning; it is borne out of the very mechanism of acculturation.